Free The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

head.
    â€œElián,” she said, spreading her hand against his cheek. “What is your plan here? They’re machines . They don’t have qualms. They won’t become tired. They won’t simply give up.”
    â€œSo, what? I should just lie back and enjoy—”
    A shock—loud enough to hear, a sound like one popcorn kernel popping. Elián didn’t even cry out; he just crumpled. He would have gone to the floor except that Xie caught him. She and Thandi held him for a moment as he flopped limply. Then Elián seemed to both strengthen and sag. Tension came into him, and he bent his head forward to rest in his own hands.
    â€œElián, I am impressed with your strength of will,” said Xie. “But you are one of the Children of Peace now. Other fates are tied to yours.”
    Elián snarled without looking up: “I’m not a goddamned Child of Peace!”
    Everyone drew breath, waited—but no shock came.
    Elián lifted his head, looking for a moment bewildered.
    Thandi shook her head. “You have no idea,” she said. “No idea.” She jerked upright and grabbed the apple buckets. “I have to— I am going to get more apples.”
    Grego and Xie looked at each other—I was missing something here—and then Grego bowed to Thandi. “Certainly, you should.”
    â€œExplain to him,” said Thandi to Xie, as she stalked out. “Explain to him that it’s all of us.”
    Is it racist to think of Thandi in terms of African animals? I was not sure. Once, she’d told me I had a face like an Irish wolfhound, and that had not felt like a racial remark, merely an overly astute one. In any case, she went out, and I thought of a cheetah’s sway, fragile and strong and proud.
    â€œWhat does she mean?” Elián surprised me—he could get up, and he did. Grego, meanwhile, set an unexpected example, turning one of the hand cranks that lowered the wooden press on the long spool of its screw. I took the other, and soon the friendly creak-click of the wooden gears filled the little space.
    Elián stood there, bewildered. “Da-Xia, what does she mean?”
    Xie shook her head, almost fondly, as if at a child’s folly. “The Abbot asked if we could be a stabilizing influence on you. And I—or rather, Greta and I—we said yes.”
    â€œAnd if you can’t?”
    We all just looked at him. Surely it wasn’t that hard to work out.
    But Elián didn’t seem to be working it out. He looked at me, rather wide-eyed. Evidently Guinevere needed to spell it out for Spartacus. I said, “We’ll be punished collectively. We have been already. And we will be again.”
    â€œBut that’s not— I didn’t— That’s not fair!”
    â€œIt is the Precepture,” said Xie.
    And it was.

7
A SPOT OF TROUBLE
    H owever bullheaded and masochistic Elián had been on his own account, he settled down when he realized that other fates were tied to his. In the gardens, in the refectory—anywhere we were in sight of the younger children—he behaved less stupidly.
    Or at least he dammed up his stupidity for a while. Like any force of nature, it sought new channels. In the classroom he was hopeless, and sometimes ended up flat on the floor, which can put a dent in the discussion of (say) aquifers.
    For instance, there was the day when we fell to arguing about why the Children of the Preceptures spoke English—a practice that Thandi had picked as her cultural injustice of the day. Da-Xia had quoted from the Utterances: Too bad. They’ve got to speak something.
    â€œHe’s not a god,” Thandi had answered. “Talis is not a god, and the Utterances are not a holy writ.”
    Da-Xia had smiled at her, her voice dripping honey. “Near enough.”
    The bickering then became general. Grego (a Baltic nobleman struggling under the weight of his Russian